#MFRWAuthor Blog Challenge: Week 35, My Bad Habits

Yep, bad habits, my least favorite topic, because I have a few of them, mostly related to procrastination. Oddly enough, when I started this post on Tuesday afternoon, the linky list to sign up for the weekly blog hop wasn’t working, so I even had to procrastinate on that! LOL, I can’t think of a more perfect metaphor, but Mercury is retrograde.

There’s a theory that procrastination is caused by either fear of failure or fear of success, and that may be true in some cases. In my case, I know that indecision plays a big factor.

I’m an Aries, which means I get excited about starting new projects, but am not so excited about finishing old ones. I can’t tell you how many unfinished manuscripts litter my hard drive. I don’t want to know how many how many unfinished manuscripts litter my hard drive. Not to mention unfinished needlework projects and genealogical charts from before I started writing. And I won’t even mention the boxes full of old stuff in the storage area.

Which brings me to hoarding, I mean collecting, another bad habit. No, on second thought, let’s put that discussion off for another day.

Before you decide I need professional help and/or an intervention, I’d like to point out that it’s Week 35 of this blog challenge and I’m still hanging in here. And let’s face it. There are worse habits than procrastination, like drugs and alcohol. Though there is that little chocolate addiction… That I have no trouble finishing! But hey, dark chocolate is good for us. Right?

Now I will take a procrastination break to hunt up pithy quotes on procrastination, avoiding quotes of the “just do it” variety, as if bad habits were easy to break. (Rolling eyes here.)

surfing… surfing… surfing…

I’m back. I found some good ones at http://www.evolutionarypathways.com/quotes-about-procrastination.html.

“One of these days I’m going to get help for my procrastination problem.” ~Unknown

“One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today is tomorrow.” ~Vincent T. Foss

“If it weren’t for the last minute, I wouldn’t get anything done.” ~Unknown

“Procrastination always gives you something to look forward to.” ~Joan Konner

And one of my all-time favorites…

“I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” ~Anonymous

Should I have taken this topic more seriously? Maybe, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. Have a good weekend!

Linda

As always click on the linky list below for more author bad habits.

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Today’s prompt in the MFRWauthor 52-Week #Blog Challenge is Closed Doors or Open Doors, and I say leave the door ajar.

In my writing career, I’ve written everything from sweet Regency to erotic male/male romance, but I have never written a closed door love scene. Not that I’m opposed to that, just haven’t done it. Yet.

There’s a vocal readership now for so-called “clean and wholesome” romances, which I understand means not only no sex but no cursing. Let’s put aside my visceral dislike of the words “clean romance” which in my minds implies that all other romances are somehow dirty. My friends insist that wasn’t the attention, but it still seems that way to me. Clean and dirty are mutually-exclusive antonyms. The toilet is clean or it’s dirty. It’s be a little bit dirty or downright filthy, but it’s not clean. I wish someone could come up with a better term to satisfy that readership that doesn’t sound judgmental.

That aside, I honestly don’t think I could write a male character who didn’t swear. My dad was an Army vet and a truck driver who could swear a blue streak, esp. when the traffic was bad. I guess I grew up believing that men just peppered their conversation with cuss words. To his credit, I never heard him use the “F” word, but I heard everything else. Once I started to talk, he had to watch his language for a few years, because I repeated everything he said. Once I was old enough to understand that there were words Daddy (and Mommy) could say that Linda couldn’t, he was back to his old ways.

Even my honorable barrister, Stephen Chaplin, of Lady Elinor’s Escape utters a “bloody hell” now and then. Another male character is fond of saying “damn and blast” when he’s frustrated.

The rest of my romances fall into the middle ground of sensual (Linda) to steamy (Lyndi Lamont). While I have written erotic romance as Lyndi, I am not doing so now. The genre has changed and my vanilla sex scenes no longer qualify as erotic. I’m happier somewhere in the middle, anyway, though as I said, not opposed to closing the door if that seems appropriate to the characters and the story. It seems the rule book has been thrown out these days and pretty much anything goes.

My next project will be a sweet romance, though I’m keeping that closed door love scene in mind, just in case.

And as always, click on the linky list below for more posts in the MFRWauthor 52-Week #Blog Challenge

Linda / Lyndi

Linda McLaughlin/Lyndi Lamont

Romance author

Category Archives: MFRW blog challenge

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